O'Neill, B.C. (2005) US socio-economic futures. In Options for Future Climate Policy: Transatlantic Perspectives, Müller, Friedemann and Riechel, Alex (eds), Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin.

U.S. socio-economic trends will be important determinants of future energy demand, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as determinants of the impacts of climate change. These trends include demographic changes, trends in economic growth and its distribution across different sectors of the economy, and shifts in consumption patterns associated with changing lifestyles. Here I focus on demographic and lifestyle factors, highlight plausible alternative outcomes, and comment on their potential significance for future emissions. The timescale of focus is the next 20-100 years. In general, there is little that can meaningfully be said about these trends more than a century in the future, and the literature that attempts to do so is extremely sparse. It is taken as understood that none of these trends by themselves, nor even socio-economic factors considered together, would completely determine future emissions or vulnerability to impacts. Changes in technology, as well as political and institutional factors, in combination with socio-economic factors will co-determine emissions and vulnerability outcomes.
First, I discuss potential demographic outcomes in terms of population size, age structure, living arrangements (e.g., household size), and spatial distribution. Next, I discuss two ways in which demographics could affect future energy demand and emissions in the U.S.: through impacts on macro-economic growth, and through lifestyle-related compositional effects on aggregate consumption patterns. Finally, I discuss a few selected additional lifestyle factors that may be important over the next century.

Responsible for this page: Katja Scherbov
Last updated: 19 Oct 2005